SAS sniffs potential in data surge

A STAFF REPORTER

Sudipta K. Sen in Calcutta on Monday. A Telegraph picture

Calcutta, Aug. 4: SAS India, a business analytics and services firm, today said banking and financial services, telecom and clinical research would see a surge in data generation and open up avenues of efficient data management and analytics.

According to Sudipta K. Sen, regional director (south east Asia) & vice-chairman and board member-India, SAS Institute (India) Pvt Ltd, about 350,000 professionals in the country are working in knowledge process outsourcing (KPO).

“The compounded annual growth rate expected in this is 25 per cent. There is a huge opportunity waiting to be tapped,” he said.

He was speaking at a session where the Calcutta Business School (CBS) announced a tie-up with SAS to introduce a certificate programme in business analytics.

Sen said analytics had moved from backroom to the boardroom and was fuelling the demand for managers with analytical skills. Data management, analytics and visualisation are the core emerging areas. The development has resulted in data volumes going beyond standard transactional levels, mainly because of the increasing use of mobile devices, cloud computing, digital lifestyles and Web data.

India is expected to contribute 6 per cent to the global data that need to be mined. In 2012, the amount of data exceeded 2.8 zettabytes. This could be fifty times more by 2020. By 2016, the cumulative size of all data centres is slated to exceed 16,000 acres.

Companies have started to invest in building infrastructure to meet the growing need to solve complex business problems with the help of advanced analytics. “There can be 400 discreet systems where data can be extracted. The challenge is to bring them together,” Sen said.